Extracting Signal Electron Trajectories in the COMET Phase-I Cylindrical Drift Chamber Using Deep Learning

We present a pioneering approach to tracking analysis within the COMET Phase-I experiment, which aims to search for the charged lepton flavor violating $\mu\to e$ conversion process in a muonic atom, at J-PARC, Japan. This paper specifically introduces the extraction of signal electron trajectories in the COMET Phase-I cylindrical drift chamber (CDC) amidst a high background hit rate, with more than $40\,\%$ occupancy of the total CDC cells, utilizing deep learning techniques of semantic segmentation. Our model achieved remarkable results, with a purity rate of $98\,\%$ and a retention rate of $90\,\%$ for CDC cells with signal hits, surpassing the design-goal performance of $90\,\%$ for both metrics. This study marks the initial application of deep learning to COMET tracking, paving the way for more advanced techniques in future research.

Fumihiro Kaneko, Yoshitaka Kuno, Joe Sato, Ikuya Sato, Dorian Pieters, Chen Wu · 2024